COLUMN: Corn mazes are the bane of Halloween
I’m not going to lie, I don’t really do Halloween.
No disrespect to anyone in society who harbors our nation’s most psychologically confused holiday, they have full right to render support; it just isn’t my thing.
I mean, I enjoy festive colors, pillowcases laden with sweet things, facially reconstructing pumpkins, sitting with the fellas to enjoy “Saw,” “Saw II,” “Saw 17,” “Saw Rides Again,” “The Land Before Saw,” or, my personal favorite, “Un-Saw-lved Mysteries” — or even dressing up like the “Milkman,” the dreaded super villain from “All That” — just as much as anyone else. I simply don’t see why I have to confine those precious and wholesome activities solely to the last day of October.
There is, however, one aspect of the hallowed Spookapalooza I could do without, regardless of when it rears its ugly foot. I’m not speaking of safety issues, contaminated candy, lame parties or even Bratz costumes — though I’m getting pretty darn close. My Halloween holdup is far worse. Without a smidgen of hesitation, I could more than do without corn mazes.
Now, don’t look at me all crazy like I lost an appendage or something, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We already have enough cliché character roles for cornfields. Once we’ve sifted our way through talking scarecrows, crop circles, “Field of Dreams” and any sincere “Veggie Tales” reference that I can’t seem to spool off the top of my head, there is just little to no wiggle room left for ways to utilize the rockstar of farm facilities.
If anyone is man — or woman as the case may be — enough to add another log to the rolling cornfield-publicity fire, they better come with something brilliant and, in all fairness, the Halloween corn maze just ain’t it.
The annual corn maze experience scarcely differs. It starts with a group of young bystanders commiserating over the best way to spend their Halloween evening. Seeing clearly that it’s too cold to do anything active, the lackluster cavalcade of films to ingest in theatres are three less-than-sexy remakes and a film based on a baseball book documenting how Benjamin Button got the Oakland Athletics to collectively pass the SAT’s, they all reluctantly hop inside of a Honda Accord and make their way to the nearest pseudo-tundra-embossed pasture.
After an hour of waiting in line for what they could have sworn to be either a mutton-busting rodeo or a Bluth Frozen Banana, they make their payment — generally expensive enough to re-balance the national debt if it were sold by the barrel — and they make their way in.
Everyone in the group forms their traveling horde to the basic format: tight-shirted guys who are trying as hard as galactically possible to be tough in the front, marginally petrified girls who are attracted to tight shirts just behind, sincerely frightened girls in the back, people in striped polo shirts taking up the middle and people who get a huge kick out of messing with spook-clad teenagers who aren’t allowed to touch them leading the charge.
Things look harmless at first, with plastic spider webs and battery-operated-wicked-witch voiceovers lining the walls. But it doesn’t take long before things get downright serious — you all know what I’m getting at — as they see firsthand what they paid to see.
Corn. Lots of it. Evidently someone in a polo shirt took a wrong turn.
The group finds its way back into the maze not realizing it missed more than three quarters of it — missing the stirring climax when the maze owner attempts to re-enact “The Ring” for the fourth straight year, with a little girl in a black wig, white makeup and a silk dress slowly walking up and asking passersby if they have any Capri Sun — and are accompanied by something so heinous, so bone chilling, so downright ghastly that it sends each person into a whirling dervish of fear, anguish, and…
No, wait — it’s just a bunch of people in beards and denim overalls. They must have run out of costumes. But, hey, someone has a Dick Cheney mask on, and that’s pretty chuckle worthy.
Finally, after dodging what must have been at least four maniacs in overalls with chain-less chainsaws who for no definable reason keep calling themselves “Planeteers,” they make it to the end of the David Bowie-less labyrinth, by some miracle, in one piece.
And just like any individual who has experienced the same 11 shattering minutes inside any Eerie Entryway of Ethanol, they do the only out rightly humane thing they can think of — they promptly ask for their money back, spend the returned cash on a Redbox rental of “3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain,” and mentally factor how many rounds of Apples to Apples it’ll take to save what is left of their already tarnished All Hallow’s Eve. Turns out we all have regrets.
– Steve Schwartzman is a junior majoring in marketing and minoring in speech communication. His column runs every Wednesday. He loves sports, comedy and creative writing. He encourages any comments at his email steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu, or find him on Facebook.